Its owner, Charlie Evers, 71, has lived his entire life, at least until recently, at the marina, which was founded as a seaplane base in 1937 by his father, Carl.

By the 1950s, the place had about 40 seaplanes and five ramps for them. By the late 1960s, seaplane storage and charter flights gave way to boat-slip rentals, Mr. Evers said.

But there is still an orange windsock fluttering up there atop a pole at the end of the wide concrete pier, here where the East River turns into Long Island Sound.

The marina still shows up on aviation maps as one of the last seaplane bases in the region. And there is still the four-seat seaplane that Mr. Evers keeps in a metal shed and tools around in once or twice a week.

The marina, located in the Spencer Estates section between Pelham Bay Park and the Throgs Neck Bridge, is dotted with repurposed items that Mr. Evers has found.

The elevated boat racks were fashioned from discarded guardrails from the Bronx River Parkway, said Mr. Evers, who has turned old Jet Skis into planters, and adorned walkways with discarded propellers.

His Porta-Potty is a couple of old-time submersible steel tanks with portholes, salvaged years ago from a Coney Island carnival. And the hulking breakwater that shelters the boats from the open Sound is actually three huge steel railroad barges secured by mammoth Navy anchors and chains from a minesweeper.

That space-age fiberglass dome attached to Mr. Evers’s former dockside house (now his office) was originally designed for a Chilean ski resort; Mr. Evers made it into a party space, complete with leather couches, a fireplace, a hot tub and a bar.

Mr. Evers lived for more than 30 years in the house next to the boat ramp. Then a few years ago, he and his wife, Charline, bought a house on nearby City Island. The marina, with nearly 200 slips, serves a working-class clientele; to keep things affordable — dock fees average around $1,700 a season for your basic runabout — Mr. Evers favors functionality over formality.

There are few amenities and few rules. Owners paint and fix their own boats, and some skippers party on board without ever leaving the dock, to save on gas.

With no steady employees, Mr. Evers does all the boatyard and marina work himself, operating a fleet of forklifts, cranes, hoists and other machines.

“I like buying machines; it’s cheaper than paying employees,” he said on Wednesday as he picked up trash, collected dock fees and addressed one complaint after another from boat owners.

“I’m the owner, so I get to clean up after everyone,” he said, walking past the boat ramp, with its spray-painted reminder: “Did you put the plug in?”

He had just finished baiting his raccoon traps with the only food that works: chocolate doughnuts.

Other marinas on this stretch of waterfront have been converted to condos. Mr. Evers says he is waiting for the right offer, but is wary about retiring because, “I see guys who sell their boatyards and go sit on a beach in Florida and keel over.”

Besides, he sees importance in carrying on the business he got from his father, a barnstormer and daring aviator who, he said, smuggled rum from Cuba and mined diamonds in South America. Carl Evers also flew with Howard Hughes and taught Katharine Hepburn how to fly here, the son said, and made good money picking up financiers from Wall Street by seaplane and flying them to vacation spots.

Young Charlie grew up on a barge in the marina and was flying seaplanes by adolescence, earning his pilot’s license before his driver’s license, he said.

Businesses at the marina included a flight school, a sprawling restaurant barge and an after-hours club in a shiny structure that was once the Mamaroneck Diner.

These days are tamer, because of stricter regulations all around, Mr. Evers said.

“Everything you could do, you can’t do anymore,” he said.

Seaplane pilots still use the base occasionally, as Jimmy Buffett did not long ago, said Mr. Evers, who says he can make it in his seaplane to his lake house in Maine in two hours.

By himself, he can push the plane down a concrete ramp into the water and take off without radio contact or permission from anyone, as long as he is heading northeast up the Westchester and Connecticut coasts, he said.

“I can come and go as I please that way, but if I went without notification in the other direction, they might shoot me down,” he said gesturing toward the Manhattan skyline off in the hazy distance.

Flying remains his passion, he said, adding, “The boats just pay the bills.”

Email: character@nytimes.com

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The Particulars

Name Charlie Evers

Age 71

Where He’s From Spencer Estates, the Bronx

What He Is Marina owner and seaplane pilot

Telling Detail Now Mr. Evers commutes to work across Eastchester Bay in Little Toot, his mini-tugboat, which is not to be confused with Big Toot, his 42-foot-long luxury cruiser.